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Why Carl Icahn Lost to Larry Fink

In the Delivering Alpha battle, Larry Fink may have well bested Carl Icahn, mainly because Carl just doesn't know how ETFs work, making himself look rather foolish.

Icahn took Larry Fink and Blackrock to task over high yield ETFs, talking about a junk bond bubble, when in reality the junk bond ETF market is a very small part of the entire bond market. Some key comments on just how wrong Icahn is about ETFs:

Josh Brown - "If there's a high-yield bond crash, it doesn't matter if you own them in a high-yield bond fund or an ETF...I think (Icahn's) comments were indicative of the fact that he fundamentally doesn't fully comprehend how ETFs work at the very basic level," said Ben Johnson, director of global ETF research at Morningstar. ETFs are "this space ship that has landed in Carl Icahn's backyard and he doesn't know what to do with it so he is throwing rocks at it in hopes that it will go away," he said.

Jeff Tjornehoj - "But the idea that retail investors, often mocked as "dumb money," will sell at the same time on the same day -- thus pushing ETF shares below the net asset value and forcing a fire sale in the underlying assets -- is unrealistic...Mom and pop investors aren't going to be watching the market that closely... On the other hand, the hedge fund community — where they know each other and talk to each other — that's a different story."